


growing pains

by mirrorverses



Category: Star Trek
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, Gen, Headcanon, Implied/Referenced Underage, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Original Character(s), Psychological Trauma, Suicidal Thoughts, implied abusive relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-12
Updated: 2013-08-12
Packaged: 2017-12-23 05:30:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/922569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirrorverses/pseuds/mirrorverses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim Kirk's childhood is nothing but growing pains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	growing pains

They are fifteen and they are in love, and Jim knows this, though he never truly allowed himself to believe it. They were the boys at the end of the road, inseparable from the dust and wind -forgotten. It seemed frankly, logical, for them to fall together like this, between rumpled blankets and shadows. But anyone can tell you that logical doesn’t always mean right.

It feels that way when they meet in the middle of the night, rushed and giddy in the cool starlight, so Frank won’t catch them, both of them whispering threats and laughs out the open attic window as Aiden scales the building, and Jim urges him to “come on already, I’ve been waiting forever for this”, and Aiden bites back “fuck you I don’t climb buildings every day”. But Jim pulls him into the dustiness of the attic, where pizza, holos, and stolen blankets are laid out. The house creaks around them, with candles casting shadows along the wooden beams of the attic, their own forms elongated as they eat and laugh and drink stolen whiskey in the hushed silence of the night. For once, they ease together (without tantrums or threats), just simple quiet with shadows that pace like guards (hell, they are, but they don’t want to know that).

That was five months before the Quarry Incident, as the town saw fit to call it. Five months of something that they could comprehend, something that “made sense” (they focused on that, the mathematics of the way they were together, because even if the equation wasn’t quite correct, it _made sense_ , and at the time, they figured that would be enough).

It wasn’t enough.Because all dreams end and suddenly Jim stopped caring and Aiden stopped smiling and they'd push and shove, forgetting that sometimes Jim had bruises and broken bones and he refused to get help and so they tore everything apart. Jim set the(ir) blanket on fire.

At the time, the Quarry Incident had been a moment of rebellion, revolution, but now the car at the bottom of the quarry was nothing more than the skeleton of what he was at the end of those five months, when he slammed his foot down on the pedal, screaming his lungs out in exhilaration and fear, when they stopped making sense.

And when he stares down at the quarry, his face black with smoke and his eyes rimmed red like the rust that lines the crackling paint of the car down below and he knows he’s not a child anymore-

(perhaps he never was?)

-and he too is going to rust away.

Despite the fact that Aiden was right (when he’d screamed at a boy who did not care if he died, when he told him he was _corrosive_ , and that he couldn’t ever hope to neutralize him like those reactions in Chemistry, couldn’t ever turn Jim into salt and water), he tried to talk. Tried to corner him against the linoleum wall of Riverside High, pleading “why”. And Aiden, with warm dark skin and an even warmer smile, broke a little more, when blue eyes screamed, a teenage mouth smirked and legs that’d wrapped around him walked away.

They’d talked of staying young forever, of never growing up to be their parents, of fantasies that both of them believed would come true, because they were young and they were the top of their own worlds. But Neverland was make believe, and Jim Kirk was no fucking Peter Pan.

So Jim (Kirk, or Mr. Kirk, if you were the principal. Or the police.) twisted the knife a little more. Inch by tortuous inch, when he punched Aiden Ramirez in the jaw, when he threw away his comm unit, and if Ramirez didn’t know any better, he’d think that Kirk enjoyed it. But Kirk can endure, and so he continues, until Aiden ( _Ramirez_ ) stops smiling, and the world stops spinning because Neverland doesn't exist, and he's not sure that he ever really wanted it to. Maybe he likes hurting. Maybe he loves it. Maybe it reminds him that he's still breathing, and really ~~Aiden~~ Ramirez should understand ~~that but who would want to~~.

Kirk (Jim?) would sit in the sun for hours after lacrosse practice, until Aiden pulled him in (" _What’s wrong with you, Jim?! You’ve got close to first degree burns what were you thinking?!_ ") but he loves the way it feels when Ramirez’s (Aiden?) hand presses down on the red skin of his bicep, leaving a shockingly white handprint in its sunburned wake and he revels in the cries of pain and pleasure he chokes out as Ramirez drags his fingernails down Kirk’s raw, red back that night (the first time they’d touched in two months, when Ramirez had fallen shaking into his shoebox of a room).

They are in love, as much as fifteen-year-old fuckups can be, and the holos always told them that it was all that was needed to get through anything the universe tossed at them. But it's not. It can't fix the broken ribs or the screaming parents, not Kirk’s hatred or Ramirez’s hurt. They're two fucked up kids and they're not even sure they can love, because love makes hearts melt through ribs, so they try until they don't.

It falls apart (was it ever really strung together in the first place?) just like everything else in Kirk’s life — with fury, and a bang, and then utter silence. It stings like Frank’s knife or Dr. Ramirez’s words, but didn’t Kirk always say he wanted to feel? And if this wasn’t feeling, Aiden didn’t know what was.

He tries not to feel the day Ramirez screamed that he wasn't going to waste his life on someone who didn't want his, because he may want to feel but not **t.h.i.s** much, never this much, and Jim tells him that maybe he never felt at all.

A day, maybe two later, he's got a pretty blonde on his arm like she was made for him, her eyes gleaming like she knows him, lips pursed, ready to tell secrets that she’s never learned, and it will repeat over and over for years, like the voices in his head that tell him to give up and let himself burn with a phaser to his temple, when he finally gets tired of existing.

It gets to be too much, and he’s feeling everything and nothing at all when those cadets smash bottles into his face, punch him over and over, their boots colliding with his rib cage and he’s ready, he’s been ready for years, because this is the fury, and this is the bang, and he’s waiting for the silence, he longs for it, reaches out to it, but it’s gone with a shrill whistle, a clearing crowd and three simple, but undeniably life changing words:

"You alright, son?"

 *

(And later, a whole three years later: Aiden sees Jim on the news. His TA had dragged him to the nearest console, shouting “enough about bioengineering, look, _look_ ”, and he watches the fallen drill and the face of one James T. Kirk in cadet reds being hailed as a “hero”. He smiles, oh so warm, and cries because the rough little boy he knew finally grew into himself. They still fall together like they did as children, -voices overlapping and twining together like the most intricate music, filling in the years-long spaces on a vid call hours later- but they don't expect each other to break the fall. They’ve done as much themselves, forming their own safety nets through the years, but that doesn’t mean they still can’t remember that they loved, and that they still do love, but they aren’t in love and it’s the happiest they’ve been).

 


End file.
